DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Iran has executed British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported on Saturday, January 14, after sentencing the former Iranian deputy defense minister to death on charges of spying for Britain.
The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported the execution early on Saturday, without saying when it had taken place. Late on Friday, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly had said Iran must not follow through with the sentence – a call echoed by Washington. In an audio recording purportedly from Akbari and broadcast by BBC Persian on Wednesday, he said he had confessed to crimes he had not committed after extensive torture.
In the video, Akbari did not confess to involvement in the assassination but said a British agent had asked for information about Fakhrizadeh.Reuters could not establish the authenticity of the state media video and audio, or when or where they were recorded., now the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was defense minister from 1997 to 2005, when Akbari was his deputy.